The Hot Zone

It is ridiculous that they don't where general personal protective equipment in the BL1 lab! Also real scientists would open unknown animal samples in a biosafety cabinet to ensure that neither they or the sample get contaminated. Contact me if you need a technical consultant that knows about lab safety!

Hot Zone: Anthrax explores aspects of the 2001 anthrax scares in ways I never heard at the time. I felt they gave away the conclusion a tad too early, and the timing feels weird (it apoears the investigation is happening weeks or months after 9/11, but in reality the investigation didn't conclude for 7 years). However, most of the acting is wonderful! A few anachronisms were distracting, like a Keurig, wall-mounted flat screen, and center-parted hairstyles were big misses for a 2001 setting, whereas Hot Zone series 1 was better about time period accuracy.

EBV does not stand for Ebola virus but for Epstein-Barr virus. Ebola's acronym is EVD.

The cast is excellent, but they can't save the bad writing and worse pacing. I read the Richard Preston book back in 1994, and again last month when I heard about this miniseries. The book is an accurate accounting of the real events of 1989, and it's an edge-of-your-seat exciting read. This miniseries takes the same event and manages to drag it out with unnecessary backstories, wooden dialogue, and a dozen cliches. Then there are the blatantly incorrect representations of protocol in a lab environment. (I was in the medical field in 1989, and we did have strict ppe protocols.) My advice is to treat this as pure fiction, loosely based on the facts of the actual events. Get the true story from the book.

Read the book when it came out and it scared me pretty badly. The series started out well but as we got to the last few episodes everything that could go wrong did for overly dramatic effect. The situation with Ebola is scary enough without the overly contrived situation. Additionally Liam Cunningham as Wade Carter started out doing American accent but by the end of the series sounded like he just got off the ship from Ireland.